


Pity

by TsarBomba



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drug Use (Mentioned), F/F, One-sided/unrequited feelings, Toxic Relationship, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 21:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13326711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TsarBomba/pseuds/TsarBomba
Summary: They're both a little sick in the head.





	Pity

**Author's Note:**

> While this was the product of a hard few weeks I'll admit this was written and posted with a fair amount of misgiving.

A spiteful ray of light pushed through the slats in the wall, insalubrious in how it glowed, and Cait glared up at the ceiling from her bed, watching dust motes drift aimless, and scratched at old scars in the crook of her arm. Outside the room she heard hammering, a rhythmic _thud thud_ _thud_ as they raised yet another home, one of Judith's practical designs, a two-story square apartment that would hold four people, two on each level. Just like the one she had shut herself within. She could leave her bed and help, but she would not. It was easier to wallow in her bitterness alone, and if she had to look Judith in the face, meet her pale, earnest eyes with her own, receive the small, graceful smile that curved her lips when she knew she did not deserve it, she would scream.

Her head lulled to the side. She stared at the hole she had punched in the wall that morning, next to the door to the hall. Her knuckles, wrapped in gauze, throbbed. She was sure that she had broken something but she welcomed the pain. It was real. It was present. It kept her mind on tangible things. A flash of a face appeared and she shut her eyes hard and willed it away. She wanted to hit something else.

She stood up, paced around the room, like a pit dog in a kennel. A room that Judith had helped her design, had helped her make her own. She had never had her own space, always just a bedroll in a dark closet. No keepsakes, no possessions. Her bat, bloodied, was displayed on the wall, next to trophies she had taken from her time in the cage: bits of armor, multicolored locks of hair, knives, a single leathery finger she had taken from the asshole who had cost her three teeth. Around these she had tacked up posters she had found on their travels. Most of them were pin-ups torn from old magazines: busty women in lace and silk and leather, with big red lips and fuck-me stares, obscene expressions on cartoonishly sensual faces. Cait's favorite was on the back of her door, so no one could see it unless they were in here with her with her door closed, and no one ever was. She did not care if anyone saw the others, if they thought them tasteless or crude. In fact, she liked that they made people uncomfortable. But the one on the back of the door, the woman with light hair and grey eyes, draped in blue velvet, wearing a small, familiar smile that was not so much sultry as it was knowing, that one she could not let them see. She studied it from her bed. She thought about ripping it down and tearing it apart.

A loud, warm laugh pierced the stillness of her space, like an intruder. Piper. Piper did not even live here. She had a home of her own, far from Sanctuary, yet she walked around the settlement like she belonged. Piper, with her easy charm, her way with words, her quick eyes, her wide mouth that was perhaps not beautiful but still attractive, still welcoming. Cait looked at herself in the mirror. A mirror that Judith had given her just because Cait had mentioned, one time, that she sometimes forgot what she looked like until she caught herself by accident in a murky window or a reflection off a metal wall. She was attentive like that. She remembered everything everyone told her. Cait regarded herself, her hard, coarse face flecked with scars on sallow skin and her wide shoulders and her stringy hair, and she wanted to shatter the glass, crush the shards to dust so none of her could be seen.

She swallowed, looked away. Judith had told her to seek her out if she ever felt the need to use again. She did not, she had not in a long time, but she briefly considered lying just to have her attention. It was a sick, shameful sort of impulse and she clenched her fists, her broken skin straining against the bandage around her hand, and she felt the blood begin to seep once more as the scabs opened. Judith would wrap it again if she asked, would nurture her with cool hands that treated Cait with more gentleness than she had ever offered herself. Instead she tore the bandage off and wiped the back of hand on her pants, savoring the sting as she dragged the raw skin across the fabric.

Piper laughed again outside, seemingly at nothing. The sound ignored the walls Cait had placed between them. If Piper was out there, Judith was too. She shook her hand and stepped out, making sure to lock her door behind her.

She had chosen the second floor because it meant she had less foot-traffic around her door. She descended the steps and stood in the entryway, asked herself why she had bothered getting up at all but knowing the answer even if she would not put words to it. In the dusty light she squinted against the low sun. The hammering continued, driving a nail right behind the backs of her eyes and making her head throb. They would stop soon though, even with the lights they had set up they never built into the night and the sun was not far from setting.

Judith and Piper stood together in the middle of the road, talking with that cranky bitch Trashcan Carla. Cait realized that if Carla was here it must be Saturday. Not that it mattered, but if it was Saturday, then it was her birthday.

She considered that. She was not positive how old she was. She was pretty sure she was 26, or close, but even that was a guess. And the number itself seemed meaningless.

She looked back up. Piper wore a cocky grin and had a hand resting on Judith's shoulder, an easy, thoughtless touch. Like she belonged. Judith caught Cait's eye as if she had felt the weight of them upon her and smiled in greeting. Cait swallowed and turned away, pretending to not see her.

The "bar" they had set up was little more than a cooler stocked with whatever anyone could find and a few stools and chairs set around an empty, pre-war house that was no longer structurally sound enough to live in and operated largely on an honor system: either leave a few caps on the counter or try to replace the bottle you take with one you scavenge. Cait did neither and palmed the vodka and made to walk back to her room. She did not bother taking a glass. MacReady and Preston sat in the corner, watching her furtively and nodding when she met their eyes before quickly dropping them back to the bottles in their hands. Quiet, contemplative types with tragic origins, like most of the strays that Judith collected. She thought she heard someone call her name as she left the house and retreated back into the apartment but once more she pretended not to notice.

Back inside, back up the stairs. Back of her hand smeared with dried blood. She still wanted to hit something. Times like this she missed the Combat Zone, the simplicity of shoving the needle in her arm and destroying someone. Mindless violence, no reason required. She wondered if she could goad one of the rougher types who had settled here into fighting her. She also wondered how upset Judith would be if she punched a second hole in the wall.

The painful truth was that she would not be upset. She would regard Cait with a patient, worried gaze after she saw what she had done to herself, and she would pick the splinters from her skin again and then repair the damage, on both Cait and the wall. And Cait would feel shame, but more importantly she would feel an awful tug beneath her ribs, beyond the bone and sinew, and she would not be able to look Judith in the eyes as she quietly scolded her and asked her not to do that again, with no anger in her voice.

She closed the door and threw herself on the bed, bottle in hand. She took a drink, licking the sharp taste off her lips where it spilled out. She considered the blonde woman on the poster nailed to the back of her door. She took another drink. With the hand not holding the bottle she unfastened her pants. Took another drink. If she squinted the eyes became kinder, the smile less acerbic. She slid her fingers under her waistband.

A knock on the door made her shout out an obscenity and nearly spill the vodka all over herself. She flew off the bed, her hands shaking, her heart in her throat.

"Just a damn minute," she muttered, though they had only knocked once. She quickly buttoned her pants again, cursing under her breath, though her rage faded immediately when she saw who stood on the other side.

"Sorry to bother you," she said, smirking in gentle amusement at Cait's flustered countenance, and Cait was embarrassed to realize, now that she had seen them one right after the other, that the woman on the poster had absolutely nothing on the real thing.

"It's fine," Cait managed, pushing her hair away from her face, a futile, nervous gesture. "Just, uh, scared the shit out of me."

Eloquent as always. Judith tilted her head. "Again, my apologies. But I brought you something, wanted to catch you before you shut yourself in for the night."

Cait saw that Judith had one hand behind her back. She frowned, already uneasy at the idea of a gift. "What's that?"

Judith brought her arm around. It was a gun. A shotgun. Obviously hand-crafted. And it was perfection.

"I know you're partial to your own weapon," Judith began, already making it clear that this placed no obligations on Cait at all, in spite of all she had done for her just for the sake of doing it. "But I thought I'd give you something practical."

"Why?" Cait asked, her suspicion doing nothing to discourage the ever-present curve of Judith's lips.

"It's your birthday, isn't it?"

Cait had never felt more stupid. She gaped at her, wondering how she could have remembered something so insignificant. Judith was still holding the gun, waiting for Cait to take it. Cait swallowed and grasped it.

"You made this?" she asked, already knowing the answer. Judith was a creator, while Cait was a destroyer. Of course she would make her something with which she could do what she was meant to.

"Of course. You think I'd just go out and find one when I could make one better?"

Her tone was teasing. Cait did not smile. She had never felt so overwhelmed.

"I- thank you. I can't even sort of repay you for this though."

Judith shook her head. "There's no debt here. Not for a gift. And you'll repay me plenty when you take it with us on our little expeditions. It'll pull its own weight."

Cait looked it over. She did not doubt that. She glanced up to meet Judith's face. Judith was not looking at her, though, she was staring at her hand.

"You're bleeding again. Do you need that redressed? I know how hard it is to wrap a wound one-handed."

Cait should have said no. Allowing her to do this would mean days of torture later. If she cared about herself at all, she would refuse, retreat to her room, lock her door, get drunk, masturbate and fall asleep.

But she did not care for herself, and her destructiveness extended to her own being, so she nodded and let Judith in, being sure to leave her door open.

She placed the gun on her desk with care and sat on the edge of her bed. Judith rifled through her shelves for the first aid, knowing where everything was since she had placed it there and took a spot beside Cait. She grasped the bloody hand and placed it on her thigh, laying it flat against her. Cait's jaw clenched, her teeth clicking together.

"You need to be careful with wounds like this," Judith said, wiping antiseptic over the torn skin. Cait pretended that the twitch in her fingers was because of the sting and not because of the woman beneath them. "If they get dirty, they can get infected. If they get infected, you can lose a hand."

Cait's mouth twisted. Another one of Judith's attempts to get her to take better care of herself. Advice that would be disregarded.

"You're not my mother," Cait said, thoughtlessly, immediately regretting the words as they left her mouth.

Judith paused, just for a moment, something that made Cait want to curl up and die briefly flashing across her face. "You're right, I'm sorry."

Judith gingerly picked up the hand and began to wrap it, a little tighter than before. Cait tried to just watch her hands, but her gaze drifted up to rest on Judith's profile. She followed the angular lines of her face, the dip of her cheek, where her pale hair pulled away from her temple to the gathering at the base of her skull.

"Sorry," Cait said quietly, her throat thick as the apology was torn from it. "Didn't mean that. You... you would have been a good mom, too. The kind I would've wanted."

Judith smiled, the transgression against her already forgiven. Cait suddenly worried that that was how Judith saw her, like a child who needed to be cared for, or something to fix, and she suddenly pulled her hand away.

"Thanks," she said quickly, looking anywhere but at Judith, suddenly regretting their proximity and wishing she had never asked her in. "Already feels better."

Judith nodded, though her brow was furrowed in open concern. Cait felt a wash of panic. Every nerve in her body was screaming at her to take Judith's face in her hands and kiss the hell out of her, force away the worry with rough lips that she would try to make gentle. She would deal with the consequences, with Judith's rejection and Piper's fury and her own soul-crushing humiliation.

But she stopped. There was something in Judith's eyes, something she had seen before, something she hated.

It was _pity_.

She knew. She could read the way Cait looked at her, because of course she could, and she _knew_ , probably had for weeks, and she was not upset, or surprised, but simply understanding. And that was so much worse.

Judith would let her kiss her if she tried. She would not tell Piper, she would never mention it again, and she would probably even kiss Cait back. But it would be out of pity, not because she loved Cait in the same way Cait loved her.

And yes, it was love. It was the sort of terrible, gut-wrenching love that made Cait hate herself, made her want to tear the whole settlement apart with her bare hands, made her feel insane, made her feel higher than anything she had ever forced through her veins.

Judith would allow her that without judgment, because that was how she was. A glutton for everyone else's burdens. An emotional sponge. But she would never reciprocate. And Cait understood this.

Loathing filled her up, the taste bitter. She tore her eyes away from Judith's, flinching when a hand lifted to slowly tuck some of her hair behind her ear. The touch left the skin of her cheek numb.

"Take care of yourself, Cait," Judith murmured, standing and leaving without another word. Cait wanted to die. She wanted to be blown out of existence, to be smaller than dust. She said nothing as Judith shut the door behind her, leaving Cait face to face with her pale mockery smiling down at her. For just a moment she was overcome by the urge to flee, to leave Sanctuary and Judith far behind her and never look back, but instead she laid down, returning to the same position previous, eyes locked at a spot on the ceiling, her heart so heavy she thought she might throw up.

Hours passed like this, the light from outside growing dim. Cait suddenly remembered the vodka on her desk and with a groan she forced herself up, every movement of her limbs agonizing, though it was not a physical pain she felt, but an incredible weariness.

She shook the bottle. Little over half left. Not enough to get wasted on, and definitely not enough to begin to forget her woes, but the idea of leaving her room to go pilfer more was far too unappealing to put much consideration into, so she laid back down on the bed and made do with what she had, drinking steadily. She took another look at the poster which, now that she really thought about it, looked almost nothing like her. She doubted that if anyone saw it they would even make the connection. She shook her head at herself in disgust, turning her face away towards the opposite wall. The same loathsome urge from before pulled at the frayed edges of her mind. Her hand travelled idly across her thigh. She imagined it was Judith's. She shut her eyes and tried to remember how her leg had felt beneath her palm, and how it might feel with the skin bared, cool and smooth, the lean muscle taut under her touch. Cait swallowed, recalled with no small amount of resentment Judith's advisement that she "take care of herself", and once more made to slide her hand into her pants.

One story down, directly under her, a door open and closed. Muffled voices rose past the floorboards. Cait stilled. Judith's room was below hers, and she had entirely forgotten that Piper would be staying in Sanctuary tonight.

They were talking. Or Piper was, at least. She could not hear what she was saying and she did not really care to.

"Fuck me," Cait cursed, her hand falling limply to her side. No way she would be able to get off with Piper running her loud mouth just feet away from her.

She laid there, glaring bitterly at a spot on the wall. She had not included a window and the lamp had been left alone and her room was dark, the only light coming from the hall where it spilled beneath the gap in her door and from the ragged hole in the wall and from Judith's room below. Their voices had gone quieter. Several minutes passed while Cait waited impatiently for their light to go off and for them to go silent.

Then she heard something else. A breathy gasp, so low that she was not sure she had really heard it until the noise repeated itself. A hot flush spread across her chest and her heart beat furiously as she realized what was happening right under her.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" she whispered, rolling hopelessly onto her side and grabbing her pillow to hold over her ears. A miserably useless attempt. It did not matter that she could not hear them anymore, the sound replayed itself in her head over and over.

She ripped the pillow from her head and laid perfectly still, listening. For several long moments it was quiet, and she could hardly hear anything over her own heartbeat. Then a moan, low and needy, rose through the floorboards, and she felt herself get wet.

She rolled over on her bed, heat blooming low in her gut. A small slit of light broke through the floor, a slightly wider gap between the wooden slats no bigger than an inch. She stared at it for several long moments.

"Christ," Cait spat, weighing the dilemma in her mind. There were few things she could think of that would be more despicable than doing what she was considering doing. On the other hand, it was a victimless crime, and Cait was heart-broken and horny and did not really give a shit about the moral grey area she was about to walk.

Very slowly she lifted herself off the bed and lowered herself to the floor, being careful to not make too much noise. She angled her face to the gap, having to adjust a bit before she could see through it.

Judith's room was no larger than anyone else's, which meant that, like everyone else's, her bed was more or less in the middle of the available space. So when Cait pressed her face against the floor she looked down directly onto the bed, or more specifically, directly down on Judith.

She was laying on her back, nude, almost golden in the dim lamplight. Her hair was spread across the mattress, her long limbs sprawled on either side of her, fingers gripping the blue sheets. Her eyes were closed, and her face was turned to the side, so Cait was once more met with her profile. She bit her lip, teeth dragging over the flesh, and Cait mirrored her. Further down her body a dark-haired head worked between her legs, but Cait shifted and managed to change her line of sight so that Piper was gone entirely, only her hand on one of Judith's breasts visible to her. Cait watched her chest rise and fall, watched ink-stained fingers tweak a nipple, watched her back arch up off the bed as Piper worked her mouth against her, blessedly silent save for the wet noises of her tongue against flesh. Cait imagined it was her doing that, making her whine and gasp, twitch and whimper, and, once more, tucked her hand into her pants.

She wasted no time as she pushed her underwear aside and rubbed her fingers against herself, rough as always. She bit the inside of her cheek hard as Judith shuddered, a thin layer of sweat on her skin glistening in the light, almost glowing. Blood ran along Cait's tongue, the thick, iron taste of it heavy in her mouth. Judith's hips jerked again and again, her head pressed back against the pillow, her hands buried in Piper's hair, tugging gently. Her breathing had become shallow. She was close, and so was Cait.

Judith's eyelids snapped open, her lips parted, and Cait froze as their eyes met, her hand going still. She inhaled sharply. A second passed that felt like an eternity. They stared at each other, locked in place. Then Judith closed her eyes again, tensed, and released a low, ragged sigh as she came against Piper's mouth. In mute horror, Cait followed just behind, her own release sudden, unexpected.

She did not allow herself even a moment as she shoved herself off the floor, her legs numb and shaky, wiping her clammy hand absently on her pants as she tore them off and climbed into bed. Shame tinted her cheeks, twisted in her gut. With disgust she pulled the thin blanket over her head, smothering herself as well as she could, and hoped that she could fall asleep before Piper got too far into her turn.

 

 

 

  
Morning came as a loathsome, unwanted thing. Cait had not slept well. Her mouth tasted like the bottom of her boot. Her head ached. And she had yet to face Judith.

She could not be sure that she had caught her. Her gaze had been so momentary, and nothing about her reaction indicated that she had seen her. But the awareness that had flashed in her eyes, the knowing, it filled Cait with a sickly dread.

There had been something else there, in the curve of her brow, in her eyes, that Cait recognized in the withering white light of this foul dawn. The same thing she had seen in her gaze yesterday, that shattered her heart as if it were made of glass and not the steel she had tried to plate it in. _Pity_.

She stood up and looked in the mirror, not really seeing herself, but some pathetic creature, a parasite who fed on the good intentions of others. Who had been granted a host who was far too willing to bleed herself dry just because she believed it was the right thing to do. Who lived on everyone else's guilt and weakness and fear and sucked it in and made it her own, almost gleefully, as if it were irresistible.

She thought of Piper, how little she deserved what she had, how much she took for granted, but ultimately how she was probably the only one of them who was not irretrievably damaged.

And Judith, who she knew had seen her last night, had caught her lecherous eye peeking through the wood, but who would say nothing of it, make it something that neither of them ever had to acknowledge. It would hang heavy between them forever, like a dark stormcloud, with poor Judith bearing her own and everyone else's troubles like the good martyr she made herself to be.

And she thought of herself, who would want what she could never have, but would want forever, unconditionally, loathsomely, even as it ate her up inside.

Her first words for that day, spoken to the mirror, were meant for all of them.

"I hate you."

 


End file.
